Guild Wars 2

The point of this thread is that early feedback is given in hopes that unthought of side effects of the proposed changes could be addressed prior to them becoming live.

Of course we have to caveat this all with, those are leaked and unconfirmed changes . Without the hard numbers behind some of the skills, we can only speculate the extent of damage things like torment will do.

Keep in mind though, that the devs have closed other threads and directed us to discuss the upcoming changes here on this one consolidated thread so they could hear the feedback. Which is a sort of unsaid “the patch notes are true” indicator.

I am sure it will not be out of line by itself, but the idea of torment stacked with multiple other things going on becomes frighteningly overpowered in the minds of many. Especially with the proposed classes it will be given to.

In the end, there is not a lot of time to make drastic changes now. They could tweek the numbers, but the mechanics are set in stone until the next big changing sweep.

The trait changes are also pretty elaborate and we have to just hope for the best, with more balancing acts as time goes on.

So again, to answer your question on what is the point of this thread: It is because we care about the game we play and are invested in it’s future. You are correct though, we need to approach this with a grain of salt until it all comes to fruition.

Azure Prower.8701:

Torment seems like a replacement for confusion. Seeing as confusion is very weak in PVE, yet PVE mobs are usually always moving. Making torment extremely effective.

Yeah the direct translation of the boon/conditions is not real concrete. I took the dev wording on torment and applied it to a “movement” boon.

Still you make a very good point that confusion and retaliation are somewhat lack luster in pve due to the slow predictable attacks and that would make torment effective in kiting NPCs. Now the down side is that PvP those previous skills are strong so adding torment on top of them is a source of a lot of frustration for the community it seems.

Kind of a side thought related to the new condition.

In terms of counter play, the condition to boon ratio is off. With a new condition entering the field, what is the counteractive boon to torment?

Aegis → Blind
Fury → (Weakness)
Might → (Weakness)
Protection → Vulnerability
Regeneration → Bleeding, Poison, Burning
Retaliation → Confusion
Stability → Fear
Swiftness → Chilled, Crippled, Immobilized, Torment
Vigor → Weakness

Even then, with condition conversion skills, these do not directly apply the mechanical counter play boon. The logic seems off.

Mobility and Regeneration are heavy stacked with conditions, while the remaining conditions are acting as multiple counter plays in a wishy washy way.

More boon/condition tactics would make combat a little more interesting in this game and add a new level of counter play on top of just condition spamming the target. Smart use of conditions and boons could add more skill the gamers.

There are two available combo fields that the guardian can put down on their own:

Light
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_field

Fire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_field

Our finisher moves are typically whirls, leaps, and blasts

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirl_Finisher
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap_Finisher
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_Finisher

Now the boons we can apply through combos of our own are might and retaliation.

Retaliation is powerful, especially in group play, but less amazing in a majority of pve due to npc mobs having slow predictable attacks. A few npc attacks hit multiple times, but typically you want to stay out of them. Sometimes you can stay in it and tear up the enemy target with retaliation.

Might is a great boon that is more readily identified as useful by players as it is a stat increase to power and condition damage, allowing you to do more damage.

In regards to dodging. Learning the big attacks goes a long way to surviving. Save the dodges for the attacks you can’t afford to let hit you.

Also it seems that Vigorous Precision is a fairly must have trait to ensure we have readily available dodges in both PvE and PvP.

You can get this with 5 points into Honor, but you will need some precision to ensure it procs.

Somewhere around 20% crit should ensure you have enough vigor to proc every 5 seconds, at a fairly consistent rate if you are not building for damage but more defensive. That is not a magic number but a rough estimate.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Precision

There are tons of guides and posts about our primarily used builds on the forums, but you are still leveling so I think some experimentation while learning the class is good to understand why things work or do not work. You can worry about the end game setup when you get there…and we are getting a talent tree revamp at the end of the month so some “meta’s” may change anyway.

Well, considering they stated that guardian’s are in a good place right now and they didn’t see the need to make any critical changes to guards the last few months.

Also reading the changes, they seem to be oriented to necro/thief/warrior/elementalist/mesmer…granted it is just a snippit of the whole upcoming patch.

I don’t think we are going to see anything too major with us. A majority of our good traits are really far down the tree anyway and we build 30/30 most of the time as it is.

We do know every trait line got at least 1 change if I remember the quote correctly. As well as they mentioned they are trying to add build diversity, so lets hope for something more than honor/valor/virtues.

If you can get an interrupt/push back and time the symbol and heal together, it provides a good burst of healing to get you back on your feet. In a thick fight the chances of that happening are pretty slim though.

At most the ae pushback stops a lot of potential stompers and buys your allies time to revive you.

Almost no reason to channel your attack besides having nothing else available, you might as well at that point.

very true, the ah/monk’s focus builds guide most of our gameplay because of the survivability that they bring to the table. You can achieve a 0/15/30/x/x and still have monks or AH with a sacrifice in HP/healing power.

0/15/30/20/5 gets a majority of the wanted traits and stats in a 0/0/30/30/0 + 10 build.

If you do not go 30 down Honor you miss out on shout condition removal with AH, but with a monks set up, that is not an issue.

Spread things out a bit and see what you feel you can afford to sacrifice I guess is what I am saying.

To be fair, stability or aegis won’t stop a thief, mesmer, or ele stomp either.

Also you can anticipate most interrupts or see an animation just prior to the interrupt (usually they stop 1 spamming you and there is a lack of damage for a couple of seconds).

With this, you have a stomp for multiple downed targets in quick succession instead of waiting on 20+ second cooldowns.

I really think this is our intended primary stomper as this synergy with renewed justice works so well in pvp with the downed state and all.

Regardless, another tool for the toolbelt

Trying to apply some of that stat spread and the idea of 2k power go more for crit chance described in the video. Was messing around in spvp hot joins and it seemed like a decent roamer.

Not really an brand new innovative build and it is real similar to the original sword/right hand strength builds, but I think it was missing the balanced stat concept before.

In another post I was describing how voj is the perfect stomp utility, and it works really well in this setup with renewed justice. Triple meds is nothing new, and I’m sure more tweeking can be done to get more utility out of the setup, but I am enjoying this change from traditional bunkers for a bit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQRAsf7elUgSDHHyNEfIFRuArHA8g+DXw1DI6wGC-TwAg0CnISSlkLJTSyksJNuYlxGkJEA

Why have I never used this before?!

Virtue of Justice with Justice is Blind and Renewed Justice for stomps.

Pop it while stomping, the interrupts become misses and then VoJ is renewed after stomp is completed!

Maybe a duh moment for some, but I typically was relying on stability or aegis to complete the job, never thought about a blind :p

While this was intended to be oriented to warriors and is a little old now, I think it has some key insights to how the developers are thinking and what they intended in build development and game mechanics.

Guild Wars 2 Developer Livestream with Isaiah Cartwright, Part One
http://youtu.be/ZkCW2B9tMjg

Guild Wars 2 Developer Livestream with Isaiah Cartwright, Part Two
http://youtu.be/qdl9YAdxHug

Some takeaways I got from this is how he specified a balance in stats may be more favorable.

Choosing stats on weapons based on the attacks on that weapon versus to align with your chosen stat spread and heavy stacking one or two stats. Condition damage on weapons that have more condition applications on them. Healing with weapons with more heals on them, etc.

Food and stat modifiers via trait synergies with primary stats, such as getting precision from toughness or vitality to help supplement gaps in the builds.

He also went into more detail on how the developers see the stats and helps confirm what we as the player base see as stat synergies.

Offensive
Power/Crit/CritDmg
and
Defensive
HealingPower/Toughness/Vitality

He also indicated that all power will leave you missing some damage, as well as all crit/crit damage will leave you lacking.

Crits do 50% of power at base. So you want power over crit damage to some degree.

Somewhere around 2k power and 50% crit damage, precision starts to become the better stat to stack.

All of this is a balancing act and specific to each person’s build and stats of course.

Everything has been discussed to many ends here on the forums, but it is interesting hearing it from a developer point of view to help reaffirm our thinking and maybe encourage new ideas. I feel we have become stagnant in our builds and innovation as of late.

Drop down menus would make this site immensely more user friendly.

If you want to get really crazy, link up the queried data with a game map to have visual representation of the events as well.

Also a hyperlink to the wiki page about that event could prove insightful for users as well.

Overall, great work and nice compilation of info. Most event status pages I have seen are restricted to a few high-vis events and do not show the whole zone like you have.

All very sound analysis of the above skills and I agree with everything you said. Those skills need balancing. They are good, but they are not special enough to use over other similar skills.

Interesting insight bri, and one I have forgotten about over time myself.

It would be interesting to have good and evil “karma” points for actions taken. Overall I have brought up the good and evil idea before and most people didn’t bite that bait.

We also have a very underutilized personality gauge that displays our: nobility, kindness, ferocity. If this could be applied even greater into our gameplay I think that would satisfy some of what you are asking for: character development.

Imagine if a violent character stomps allies instead of revives them, and gains a huge self bonus in combat. Pretty brutal, but adds a new dynamic to the game.

Noble characters could gain a bonus to loot and rewards?

Kind characters could have support skills greatly enhanced?

Those are all really wishy-washy ideas, but just stuff to throw out there for creativity. I kind of like the violent ally stomp idea though.

I do know that they limited how the personality traits affected the game because they wanted to homogenize it as much as possible so as to not cause a disparity in gameplay and have players feel punished for picking the wrong options…but I think that is causing some of what we players are experiencing as blandness and everything feeling the same.

On a side note, you reminded me of old Everquest and rangers. There was a point where everything in the game had a faction of some sort that you could raise or lower. Some you had no way to raise, and would be penalized if you did the wrong thing over time.

One of those things is if you were a ranger. Many animals innately were non-aggressive to you. If you went out of your way to hunt them you could hurt your faction with the animals and they would become kill on sight after a while.

Also the goddess Tunare was non-agro to a lot of players, but for those that were loot hungry enough they would enter her plane and destroy their faction with Tunare and then eventually the whole peaceful nature plane would become KoS to them. Risk versus reward to some degree (no real point in keeping the faction, but it was tormenting for many to anger their god at first).

Those above examples made some players restrict their gameplay or not join in with the rest of the player base because they were afraid of being penalized for bad choices, and I see what ANet is trying to do, but I think they may have taken some of the “character” out of our characters to some degree.

…way longer response than I anticipated but you sparked a lot of ideas

two things in communication are:

1) know your audience
2) don’t just hear, listen

If you as the communicator can not convey the message across to your listeners, then you need to adapt and change how you speak.

If you as the listener, are hearing words but they do not make sense, you need to do what you can to listen and understand the message to the best of your ability, with what resources you have available.

Never assume everyone speaks the same, and if you are in combat and need the other person to get “ooc” and they don’t understand what “ooc” is, then you are failing as a communicator and try to state your request more plainly.

But it is under the listener’s responsibility to become accustomed to the normal terms utilized in this environment to function more cohesively and quickly.

In short, if communication fails, it’s everyone’s fault. Communication goes two ways.

When I first started playing MMOs I started with a ranger because I had seen myself as a lone adventurer exploring the wilderness. Quickly I evolved myself to a paladin because I saw myself as the protector of the weak and defender of greater causes, willing to sacrifice my own safety for the safety of others.

In the real world I am very much a loyal to a fault, sacrifice my own gains for the sake of others type of person. I also believe very strongly in respecting others and having a calm and respectful response to others and differences.

I see the guardian as a sort of stoic figure who defends the weak because of a sense of duty. So yes I gravitate to the guardian because it fits my personality.

Quick fix could be to have the block list stop audible noises from that character/account as well as the current text blocking.

For guardians, I have always felt that condition damage for us was more helpful than condition duration. Given that we are going to want to build for conditions, that is.

A 1 second proc of burning is too short to waste a condition removal on and will tick along with your regular attacks. So say you can do 300 in burning every 5 attacks, sword attacks 250+250+(160+160+160).

In a normal attack pattern without burning you do 980 damage. Now that the sword hit 5 times the last attack proced burning to do an extra 300 damage. So now you effectivly did 1280 damage, or in essence hit one extra time.

Also consider things like burn on block and protectors strike. By itself protector’s strike hits fairly hard, add a burning tick to it and enhances the damage each time you block, making it an interesting defensive build that can still respond with some damage.

So say your protectors strike does 500 damage, and your burn does 500 damage, you just did 1000 damage for blocking a strike from your enemy and taking no damage.

Additionally consider that burning is not affected by armor rating. I have found that while leveling in PvE condition damage allows me to take on much harder mobs than I could do with just direct damage alone. Transfer this idea into PvP, a heavy armored bunker is prone to conditions more so than direct damage, as we guardians know all too well.

It isn’t amazing and burst, but it is “dps” for prolonged fights. For the most part you do not want to waste VoJ unless in a group oriented fight possibly. Solo you will cause a gap in possible burning applications because the duration of the burning you can apply solo is shorter than the cooldown on VoJ.

This is augmented by traits such as you mentioned, renewed justice. In a cluster of weaker mobs in ae, you can cause a lot of burning on target and blinds to the group to enhance survivability.

A second consideration with burning is that it stacks in duration not entensity. So even if you were to apply 20 stacks of burning that each do 300 damage which will result in 6000 damage….you will still have to wait 20 seconds to see that damage ever happen. Burning is considered a bad condition because it is slow in damage versus other conditions, but I think it is just under utilized and misunderstood.

Moral of the story is like Obena said:

Obetna.7952:

“burning does a very respectable amount of damage…but it is not meant to be a primary damage application”

The vision sounds good but a lot of the players find the execution to be lacking.

In regards to rewards, it becomes hard to find a way to keep a sort of horizontal progression and offer meaningful rewards to players that want to play to feel like they gained something substantial out of difficult encounters.

I am against a gear grind and the progression approach, but I understand the basic stimuli that these things fulfill for many players.

So to reward us and not offer a new currency or form of progression, it would have to be something that is sought after by the player base in the current iteration of the game.

The only thing I can think of would be gold, precursors, legendaries, and t6 crafting materials; such as crystaline dust and powerful bloods and the like.

I can’t imagine having legendary items drop so freely being a good thing, even if it is a low percentage drop. Precursors would be enticing, but maybe make legendary items less special if they are so readily available too.

This leaves us at crafting materials and gold. If these things were to drop at a meaningful rate and at a high enough quantity to warrant the upscaling of content for 10-20 or what ever the vision is of people to be doing this content, I think it would encourage a good chunk of the player base to attempt these things.

Maybe even tie in the dropped items to the amount of people attending to some degree? This could be abused though to get 25 people together and result in everyone getting 25 dusts or something to that effect.

As for gold returns, I think this is another thing that players are finding it difficult to obtain, as well as those crafting materials. How to increase the quantity of these items without devaluing them is an issue as always, but there are plenty of gold sinks in the game that I think an increase in earnings outside of the trading post game would not hurt the rest of the population and economy.

I concur with Ghotistyx. Build craft has a lot of extra info if you want to do some theory crafting, but I find the drop down menus fall off the screen and it isn’t compact enough for my general needs.

Also when choosing sigils and runs and the like, there is not a mouse over tooltip to let you know exactly what stats are on that item until you select it. I like the flow of gw2skills and the look as well, but I keep both bookmarked for different reasons.

I think you partially answered your own question with the dedicated 30 points into virtues making it a very tailored build to take that talent.

Additionally with the excessive amount of stuns that can occur in team play or even in aoe pve, one stun break is not enough. Most tend to take Indomitable Courage instead for the extended duration of stability to prevent more stuns and the like from hindering the group.

Why not take them together? I think some do, but most pick Absolute Resolution for a bit more spread out utility for the group instead of just stuns and stability, they can remove conditions as well.

That’s the thing with gambling. The more you do it does not increase your odds at winning. The odds are the same every time you open a box, not better.

One thing that is making this drastically more bearable is the fact that the regular coffers drop from anywhere and very frequently. Getting a chance to gamble is more satisfying than gambling on your chance to gamble at a chance for a item….doubling it up made it horrendous.

At least this way I can wander around and feel like I"m making an effort.

I am also not getting credit for achievements.

Shows I have 3, yet I have completed 5.

would be nice if there was a race view to watch the moa race instead of chasing after them or waiting at the end.

Maybe a chat option to watch the races if players like

Lol last time I try to do something nice for this community. Yes they appear in other locations, no I am not going above and beyond and making a map of all those locations, but simply wanted to share an idea.

You could simply say thank you or nothing at all, instead of trying to devalue the nice thing I was trying to do for you all.

As far as the POI, that was added recently… so I need to go find it and 100% again.

Took a few minutes to composite all the hologram locations together and annotated it for ease of view.

Thank you pixlr.com!

Hopefully this will cause a more organized rotation to the farming and less people sniping each other as they port around. i.e. work as a team.

Either way, enjoy!

The e s s e n c e(it censored ess ence?) of the build is longer boons with better heals. Some have tweeked it to have more offensive stats here and there or to build up the base HP with different gear, but for the most part as long as you are maintaining regeneration, weapon swapping a lot, and rolling consistently (but not needlessly) to heal and avoid damage then you have the healway build.

So there are a few variations for sure but I do not know them all off the top of my head. Take what you have and adjust it to where you feel you have gaps. Pretty much.

It works well in PvE, but if you are going to dungeon be aware of what group you are with. This build does not bring in a lot of raw damage but it will support fairly well while keeping yourself alive. If you are in a berserker gear group then you may find yourself with a few dead and kitten ed off group members since the fights were not over fast enough.

As to the original post being removed, those are personal reasons and we will leave it at that out of respect.

Many still use it, the big down side is that boonhate/boonsteal gives more opportunities for other classes to use our boons against us. Maybe that is good since it levels the playing field a bit.

The other negative was the change to retaliation doing less damage in wvw and spvp, so the passive damage that it did was reduced.

You are not invincible with the healway build but you have to know when to get out and let heals tick. It buys you a lot of time, but you have to use that time to recover.

It is a sort of non-intuitive style of combat but very effective, albeit slower, way of fighting.

Another insightful reason, Miellyn. I wish it could look better, but there are plenty of reasons to keep it as is unfortunately.

Halcyon.3981:

CMF.5461:

I don’t really understand where the charr got the black citadel from anyway.

I know they started out really tribal and basic, then the humans came in and took over. The charr then turned to war technology and developed fast enough to fight back and have been trying to reclaim their lands in ascalon.

The black citadel looks more early asuran in nature as it is so mechanical and looks like a space ship. Yet the asurans use a more glyphic rock/machine/magic look and come from below the ground.

It just feels like the Charr were bestowed machinery from a third party than something they developed purely on their own.

That’s because most (if not all) hostile charr you encounter in GW1 are flame legion. And those are the magical god worshiping/fearing sort who doesn’t use technology. The Iron Legion (who specialise in war machines) moved in after the Ascolonians fell, resulting in the Black Citadel.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Charr#History
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charr#History

I understand the difference between flame legion, blood legion, ash legion, and iron legion. Still the development from early stages to now is pretty significant in leaps and bounds.

Still, maybe it is me reading into it that I assume the charr did not have advanced technology earlier in development. It just seems through culture and history that they were less advanced and more tribal until now.

I don’t really understand where the charr got the black citadel from anyway.

I know they started out really tribal and basic, then the humans came in and took over. The charr then turned to war technology and developed fast enough to fight back and have been trying to reclaim their lands in ascalon.

The black citadel looks more early asuran in nature as it is so mechanical and looks like a space ship. Yet the asurans use a more glyphic rock/machine/magic look and come from below the ground.

It just feels like the Charr were bestowed machinery from a third party than something they developed purely on their own.

Very nice and in depth analysis stormageddonbk and a very probable answer to why they will not be looking to update off hand animations anytime soon. Still I just wanted to point out the lack of off hand animation throughout the duration of a fight.

I main a guardian, I have one of each class. Originally I noticed this issue on my warrior.

A guardian swinging a focus around every other attack would look as silly as a warrior not swinging his off hand weapon around.

You are making this a little more complicated than it needs to be.

I think I recognized and addressed those concerns in a few of my posts about varying weapons being paired together. I offered some suggestions to those scenarios as well. I also acknowledged that they are an odd case and expanded my view from the original inception of the idea.

About the full body swing versus arm, that is a moot point as I was not suggesting we do not move our bodies at all. I am requesting that the off hand weapon be utilized more graphically or functionally instead of leaving it stagnant.

Movement of the whole body to complete the swing of course is integrated in an arm swing to make it more natural and effective. Attack animations in the game show good use of shifting of mass and balance in attacks. I simply requested that the off hand weapon be more used in our attacks.

Also, when you use tomes your stats increase fairly high.

Wrath increases Power/Precision/Vitality
Courage increases Toughness/Vitality

Mostly I don’t notice the increase in stats, but if used preemptively and built towards those stats, you may be able to see more damage or defense on big cooldowns.

Or you could use the buff in those stats as a filler in a build that lacks those stats. Cover your weakness or buff your strengths? I think tomes need some sort of adjustment in how they work in the end. They are nice but not clutch enough for the length of the cooldown for me.

Ascalon was a well defended city with terrain of mountains assisting with the castle walls.

Unfortunately a siege is meant to barricade and cause attrition to those trapped inside. Thus winning the long fight. The Charr would have won the fight if it wasn’t for the searing.

That said, any of these cities are vulnerable to attack, it just depends on the tenacity and resources of the attacker.

Never assume you are unbeatable…that is when you become vulnerable to failure.

Jski, I think you are losing focus on what the original discussion was.

Yes there is no “auto attack” but there is an attack chain that is typically left on “auto”, which in essence makes it like “auto attack”. Arguing over auto attack any more than that is just being difficult and needlessly uncompromising.

What I suggested was to graphically through animation or through function of changing the attack chain to include an attack from the off hand.

By doing this, it would make the combat look more natural and less static with the characters off hand weapons.

Off hand weapons in the game only trigger when you use an off hand weapon skill. Most of these skills are on long cooldowns so you only ever see the off hand swing every 15-45 seconds. That is a long gap in time where your off hand is stationary in an action packed fight. Might as well be holding a shield at that rate instead of a deadly weapon, if you are not going to use it.

In real life fighting, there is no need or reason to have to strike with your primary hand in order for your off hand to make an attack, so unsure where you are getting that information from, and I think you are again focusing on things to make a certain logic set work that I don’t see or understand unfortunately.

In the end I don’t think we will see a change to make our off hands look more engaged in combat any time soon. I simply posted it to voice up an opinion is all.

Some good responses here though about the complication of ranged off hands mixed with melee off hands and how having off hands attack more frequently may cause an imbalance in skills and weapons, thus causing favoritism and more difficulty in game balance.

Oh, very good point electro. I was not considering ranged/melee dual wielding and how that would effect combat.

As far as multiple animations, those could be integrated in with the auto attack chain to switch off on what attack is next, thus creating a left right style combat.

Maybe for ranged/melee dual wield add a second point blank quick shot in. Or just leave that attack out for some setups, as that is not apart of the normal idea of flow of combat. Not unheard of though.

For the different combinations of sword dagger versus sword axe. I think the second option you mentioned would work better of having the off hand do the same attack, for the sake of keeping more things viable.

Also a good point DigitialKirin, with the idea of flow of strike, many times a second attack with your offhand helps flow the strike more naturally with the movement of the body.

This is as opposed to attacking and reeling your striking arm back for a second attack. Very open and exposed with large gaps in your swing.

Imagine you swing with your left hand to the left and right hand to the left, now you have both hands on the left side, then you swing with your right hand to the right and left hand to the right. Now you have both hands on the right side, continuing the flow of attack. (not the only way to do this an pretty rudimentary)

<—-L R / R L—→

Versus having your right hand swing and return to the right hand position every time with putting in your left hand attack every now and then.

<—-R / <—-R / <—-R / L——> / <——R / <——R

Also in a lot of martial arts the idea of ambidexterity is key in many things. Like RoterFuchs said if you are only dangerous with your primary hand then your attacks can be read and anticipated.

When I was taking arnis, you were forced to train and use your off hand. There was not supposed to be a disparity between left and right. If all your sides are dangerous then you have a more complete offense and defense as well as more flexibility in stance and positioning while fighting.

I have tried swinging 2 weapons at the same time in real life. See eskrima/arnis:

http://youtu.be/Mf8jWtCdFWI?t=50s

Or even fencing with a dagger off hand or a main gauche is a familiar European style of dual wielding combat.

Also there is the Japanese style of combat with 2 weapons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

The animations for dual wielding have always bugged me. You literally stand there with your secondary weapon as you swing with the primary weapon.

The way cooldowns work are in increasing refresh times, so the offhand weapons typically are on cooldown from anywhere between 15-45 seconds, with the exception of thieves who work on an initiative based system.

Most people probably don’t think about this, but in the past I have trained with dual wielding fighting styles, and any fighting training tries to teach you to use both hands and be ambidextrous.

Our characters use the off hand weapon as an afterthought.

The only way I could see this being remedied would be to integrate the second weapon in the auto attack chain either cosmetically or functionally. (just an animation, or have the auto attack chain include an attack from the off hand with off hand stats).

Or to reduce the cooldown on offhand attacks and adjust them to be more frequently used.

I think the first option would work more seamlessly into how the game is now. If this remedy is even considered as an update that is =p

I think we know that, but the concern I am expressing has to do with the fact that those videos captured a combat system that could be more interesting than what we have now.

Taking high damage and low damage out of the system and replacing it with “you hit the enemy and it only can survive 2 or 3 hits”.

Now that damage has been removed, berserker gear versus clerics gear is meaningless. That is good or bad how you see it.

A lot of people have expressed concern with the combat in this game and how it is all about doing damage now and they are right to many degrees. The HP on enemies is far too high and the damage they do is far too high as well. Add on top of that the idea that our control and support abilities are very restrictive since we do not want to have a traditional trinity system in this game.

By removing high and low damage and just having “damage”, you now open the door for support and control to be viable again.

Super adventure box again had a stick (hit enemy) and a whip (stun enemy). The whip would not kill anything, but if used right you could control the enemy to create openings and make it easier to survive.

Yes these were made up and staged for the simple sake of marketing to make the game look fun and interesting. To entice players into playing the game.

Guess what, players wanted to play the game because of these marketing videos and various interviews talking about how different combat would be here. Then we see it is nothing like those videos.

That is sort of the point. The videos, while staged, are what some people wanted to play.

RoterFuchs.9216:

(loved that warrior chaining stomp and rush in the vid).

That’s the other thing. With abilities not on a strict cooldown like that, a combo chain system would create some interesting skill dynamics.

I know that the game is too far along it’s own path now to ever be anything like what was in that video but I just wanted to express what I felt was a true action oriented combat system.

Yes I know it was scripted and all marketing, but I think marketing got it that time, sadly.

If this game were to be like those videos then:

• Stats on gear currently would have little to no meaning as things die too fast for a traditional rpg stat system.
• Gear becomes all but cosmetic if stats do not matter, sine it is about the actions player took and not the stats on their gear or trait lines.
• Combat would obviously have to be reworked completely and that is time and effort they do not have.
• The players would be frustrated at a drastic change in the game after playing it for a year one way already.
• It just might be too hard for some people with an emphasis on don’t get hit or you die. This would be everywhere and not just boss fights.

Again I express my like and interest in a combat system like this. When Super Adventure Box came out, the first thing I noticed was the combat in it.

Things died in 1 or 2 hits, and the player also only could take a few hits before dying as well. It was so simplified and generic that is summed down the combat system into what the original idea was. Action.

I remember making a post about how much I liked the SAB combat. Even if it was very slow and simplified and yet it was still difficult enough where you had to learn enemy attacks, don’t rush in just spam attacks, use them with precision. After mastering the attacks and timing, and learning what all the abilities of the enemies were, you were able to run through the SAB with relative ease. Yet I still died sometimes if I was not paying attention. Small mistakes mattered still.

What we have now I think is a lot of fluff and overinflated systems added to the combat. There is the core idea there still, but it is hidden in stats and buffers to make it more palatable to the current user base of most MMO’s.

I only wish we could have something like in the video for a day so people could experience it and see that even if it is slow, it could be awesome.

I wonder if they could have a separate server with “action style combat” rules on it for people like me =p

Here is the funny thing…doesn’t that combat look awesome?

It is slower, more controlled, things die in fewer hits.

As opposed to us standing there letting auto attack whittle away as we wait for our bigger attacks to come off cooldown. Looks static and boring sometimes.

For balance reasons if you have multiple players combat might be trivialized with the ability to one shot monsters like that though. Yet, if we can one-two shot monsters, then in a slower paced combat system like that, they could too.

Also with the aspect of group play and things dying faster, swarms of mobs becomes more interesting and dynamic. More players are better to down the multiple mobs easier versus one player running out of attacks and getting overwhelmed.

Single target abilities are faster cooldown to be used more frequently while area effect abilities should be on long cast times or long cooldowns so that group content is not trivialized by one player with good AE.

Taking note of the elementalists pushing back skelks with water spells, now area control becomes more interesting to “buy time” for other attacks or to space out enemies better. This could open up more fight mechanics with area denial to win events and keeping enemies off your defense objective. Control and support players could feel beneficial instead of everyone needs to dps to win.

The only downside to a system like this is the prospect of projectile attacks “from” the mobs. Ranged combat would have to become more controllable versus just spamming from a distance. So max/min distance, blocks, and absorption could help protect players from ranged attacks.

For boss fights, there could be long moments of invulnerability and the players have to work to create openings using skills or environment. Much like the Super Adventure Box Frog King fight. He only took three rounds of attacks, but it caused the players to move and think a bit without focusing on high HP pools and cheap spammed mechanics.

Solo would be faster in some aspects because you would be fighting more mobs more frequently as you work your way into a cave, while in another point of view you have more time to think and use skills instead of just spamming things on cooldown for the most part.

Outgoing damage looks good in those videos, but the biggest question is how would incoming damage be dealt with so that players did not get constantly one and two show themselves.

Just noticed something with my loot from supply crates. The few things I have gotten (mask, shoulder, and breathing apparatus) are supposedly on the loot table from the previous southsun event months ago.

Are we supposed to be getting access to both loot tables or is mine borked somehow, which precludes me from getting current items for “this” event?

Beyond that, how are people getting 100s of chests farming. Was off work and farmed from 6am till midnight and got a grand total of 4 chests. Running full magic find setup minus booster. Thanks rng!

As I have recently run out of my own supply of t6 dust this thread caught my eye. I have not farmed too extensively anywhere but I do have a simple question.

Sure the stationary location farming spots have been nerfed to be less effective than before, but can you not just farm the zone by moving around and still loot the dusts?

I see outrage because of a “spot” or two are not worth it anymore, but I can’t believe that dust is completely unobtainable anymore unless those spots become active again.

Caveat to this is I have been running around in rare (not exotic) magic find gear cause I’m cheap. Also I play a guardian so you can maybe blame it on that too.

The only problem I have had with this island have been the drakes, but even them I can kill as long as I single them out and watch for the breath/tail swipe.

I am not built defensive, but I am using wall of reflection and shield of avenger for most projectile mobs, i.e. karkas and reef riders.

Also line of warding on staff has been amazing in this event too. I set up a line of warding and a wall of reflection at the doorway and the groups of mobs just decimate themselves. Then I leap in with a greatsword do a quick whirling wrath and get out to go back to spamming staff 1 for ae and kill credit.

I also have altruistic healing so that helps a ton on group event, but I can get one shot too. That happens when i run ahead of the group thinking I’m going to own everything by myself.

I don’t normally run this build but figured it was good for the content, which is why it is rare and not exotic. I bought it cheap and quick for a temporary thing and I"m doing well.

Maybe class mechanics or maybe some player awareness.

As to the first time karka swarmed and the masses of dead bodies. I remember that, and everyone died because they didn’t realize that the giant karkas would steamroll through the groups so they ran in and funneled themselves on the ramps with 2 or 3 veteran karkas…resulting in the above screen shot. A little bit of awareness and player reaction goes a long way. In the current event I see people getting rolled and stomped on by the champ karkas and I wonder why they never even attempt to roll =(

Some interesting points and a lot of constructive feedback. I agree that the rest of the anet trinity is not seeing enough effect, and that support and control are defeated by game mechanics and the avoidance of a “healer” in groups as well as other such things, so that damage is now the only thing worthwhile.

I would change more things or do it differently but what is suggested in the video is a good starting point.